Amanda’s Facial Scar

”It was the start of September and my Mom dropped me off at my friend Kimi's house for a playdate. I was wearing a Looney Tunes red shirt, tan shorts and pigtails. Kimi went outside and I told her that I’d meet her out there. We had been practicing our floor routines in gymnastics the week prior, so I wanted to practice sprinting across the floor. Ironically, there were two nannies babysitting us that day and they had just closed and cleaned the glass doors so they were sparkly clean. I walked back to her couch and got ready to sprint outside and in just a flash, I looked down to see glass all around me. I had run through the glass door so hard that I shattered it. I screamed and came back inside to see blood all over the floor dripping from my face, tongue and leg. One of the nannies spotted me and fainted instantly. The other took me straight to the bathroom to try and fix it. She soon realized it wasn’t a Band-Aid fix, so she called 9-1-1. An ambulance came and the last thing I remember was a doctor giving me a teddy bear and saying, ‘Hold tight sweetie, I just need to get glass out of your eyes.’

I woke up in the ER with the teddy bear still in my arms and my Mom above me in tears. My Dad was up North without cell service, so you can imagine his reaction when my Mom finally got ahold of him, three days after the accident. He said he had never driven so fast in his life. I was only four years old, so I couldn’t comprehend what had happened to me. Later my Mom explained that I ran into a non-tempered glass door and had deep cuts on my chin, inside of my mouth and left leg. She also said that if the glass cut my chin 5mm more, it would have severed my right jugular vein which supplies blood from the head to the heart. I had about a hundred stitches total. I was very lucky to be alive.

Today, I have noticeable scars on my chin and leg. Dermatologists have pushed for various lasers and creams to help fix my scars, but my answer has always been ‘No.’ I love my scar because it has been, and will always be, a part of my face and who I am. I don't ever want to ‘fix’ or hide my scar. It makes me unique, it tells a story and highlights my strength.”

-Amanda Schulenberg @amandaschulenberg